34 SHOUT S AND MURMURS "OH, AMOS COTTLE'" AT the town of Allegan, in the state .r-l.. of Michigan, it was recently complained against a dancing master from Kalamazoo that he had persuaded a band of followers to foot it featly in the nude under a local greenwood tree. These goings-on had exacerbated the wife of a farmer whose tIlled fields ran up to the edge of the outraged dell. The farmer's wife gladl y took time off from her more humdrum chores to lodge a protest with the authorities. She snorted at the suggestion that she might have been misled by flesh-colored tights. She had not, she explained, lived sixty years for nothing. I t is, I suppose, a le- gitimate and consoling inference that by spending several decades in this vale of tears one does at least develop a flair for the human epidermis. The inquiry which her complaint generated was conducted by Prosecutor Wellbourne S. Luna, and long after my clippings on the case have moldered to dust, I will remember that the hear- ing in Allegan was held before a justice of the peace whose name was Fidus Fish. Surely if a mere Amos Cottle could have so profound an effect on the late Lord Byron, the sight of Fidus Fish would justify me, too, in e jaculat- ing: "Phæbus, what a name!" Once again am I moved to marvel greatly at the good fortune by which kindred episodes in American lore are almost invariably enriched by such names as the late Mr. Dickens would have first adored, next appropriated, and then in- vested with immortality. C HARLES DICKENS could not be happy, or even comfortable, in the spinning of a tale until he had got the names to suit him. Such felicities as Dan'l Peggotty and Jonas Chuzzlewit were arrived at only by trial and error. For weeks before he started writing, he would carry tentative names about with him to get the feel of them, jingling them in his pocket as he stood before the fire, tossing them into the air as he walked along the road. In such a period of probatIon, one young man of destiny was known first as Thomas Mag, and next as David Mag, until at last he became, for al1 tIme, David Copperfield. Dickens carried a notebook in which he kept d squirrel's store of such nuts. He would copy them from newspapers and pluck them from the school rolls. In that waiting list, you will meet, for the first time, Lammle, Plornish, Sap- sea, Rokesmith, Dorrit, Carton, Pod- snap, Clarriker, Pumblechook, Boffin, Riderhood, and Wegg. During the War, this notebook was given by Co- myns Carr to the British Red Cross. It was bought eventually by Jerome Kern, and he kept it until his library was dis- persed five years ago. I don't know who has it now. Thus I think Mr. Dickens would have greatly doted on an advertise- ment which, to the lyrical delight of F.P .A., recently appeared in the per- sonal column of the New York Herald Tribune. It had been sent up from New Orleans to the end that some long-lost relative should communicate with Miss Melodia Tucker of Abun- dance Street. Then I am sure Mr. Dickens would have beamed as I did one morning last week when I found, in the mail on my breakfast tray, a letter with a California postmark which had been written me by a reader named Jane Letitia Sanctuary. And I think his attention would have been caught by the same detail which arrested mine in a recent episode that pleased the people at Wake Forest Col- lege, where Massa Laurence Stallings got his hook-learning. Of late they have been getting ready to rebuild old Waite Hall, which, after gracing that North Carolina campus for nine and ninety years, was burned down not long ago. Strolling across the melan- choly site of the vanished building, one of the pedagogues saw and picked up in the débris the charred fragment of a yellowing letter which .had been ad- dressed to the President of Wake Forest when the building was new. It had been written by the father of the very man who was now picking it up. At Wake Forest this was thought to be a pretty coincidence, but to my mind the charm of the incident was incalculably enhanced hy an irrelevant circumstance which only a stranger could really c;avor-only one to whose ears it was new. I mean the charm imparted to the incident by the pedagogue's name. rhat name was J. L. Memory. Pro- fessor Memory, I salute you! Are you aware, sir, that when Mr. Dickens was first planning to write " A Tale of Two Cities," he- intended to call it "Memory Carton"? DECENTLY I was faced with the ft difficulty of explaining to the puz- zled party concerned my relish of some- thing he had had about the house so long that he himself was as oblivious of it as of the fine New Hampshire air he breathes. In August of the year just past, dispatches from Hampton Falls reported the discovery there of the nude, headless, and bullet-ridden hody of a woman. Instinctively the Boston Daily Record referred to this grisly trove as the body of a young woman, and thereafter had, I trust, the grq.ce to be embarrassed by her identification as somebody's grand- mother. What delighted most readers of the first dispatches was, I am sure, the gravity with which the ineluct- able sheriff of Rockingham County boldly announced that this woman had been slain. \Vell, they said to them- selves, there's no keeping anything from him. \Vhat delighted me, however, was this officer's name. I felt better for knowing there was such a person in the world as Sheriff Ceylon Spinney. I heard later that, in telephoning to the County Jail at Portsmouth for further information, the Record office startled Sheriff Spinney by reporting this frank delight of mine. Who had they said was so pleased with his name? W oollcott. Who? Alexander W 0011- cott. rhere was a perplexed pause, and then the Sheriff bade them spell it. W -o-o-l-l-c-o-t-t. The Sheriff was incredulous, but the Record insisted. "So that's the man who's amused at my name, is it?" was the Sheriff's com- ment. And as he hung up, the Record could hear the first faint rumblings of the Homeric laughter which filled the County Jail at Portsmouth that night. -ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT